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I think if there is cap drop all players salaries will also be dropped proportionately like they did before

I am trying to recall what exactly happened at that time. Im not sure if its as you are suggesting that a proportional drop of all player salaries occurred to all the teams to keep them all intact. We had to buy out Hatcher if i recall to get under the cap. I believe the rule was created that still stands that any one player cannot make more than 20% of the overall cap. If your simply saying that the market for players adjusted to go along with the much smaller cap number then that would be correct. My memory could be foggy though or maybe im reading your post wrong.

Sucks getting old. Now im thinking you are correct and the reason teams bought out higher priced players is because they needed to fill out roster spots with more players and couldnt get cap/roster compliant until they dumped the big salaries. It would be like getting rid of one big salary to take on 2 or 3 smaller ones. Oh well im sure someone will fill in my memory gaps.

Thanks for the link. So the rollback occurred and teams like the wings still had to buy out contracts to get more lower priced players signed. I didnt see the video of the OP but i cant imagine the cap going down all that much, although i wouldnt have imagined a 37 mil cap when we were spending like 70+.

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They won't roll back the cap or salaries. The players would never ever approve it and it would screw over too many GMs to be feasible. What I think they'll do is freeze the cap where it is for a few years and set a new, lower percentage revenue determinant. At that point, the cap will be either $70 million or the new percentage, whichever is higher.

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I don't see what the big deal is. If the cap drops, player salaries will drop accordingly, there should be no issues with having to drop players to get under the cap. It is completely different than last time. Last time around, player salaries were cut by 24% (existing contracts) and yes, some teams had to cut players to get under the cap, but that is because they were operating under a pre-cap world and they may have been paying way over the cap in salaries. Going from one cap world to another shouldn't not impact anything, reduction in salaries across the board should take care of any issues.

They won't roll back the cap or salaries. The players would never ever approve it and it would screw over too many GMs to be feasible. What I think they'll do is freeze the cap where it is for a few years and set a new, lower percentage revenue determinant. At that point, the cap will be either $70 million or the new percentage, whichever is higher.

How would it screw over the GMs? The players agreed to a 24% rollback last time and players salaries are a lot higher now then they were pre-rollback, so a small rollback doesn't seem completely illogical.

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They won't roll back the cap or salaries. The players would never ever approve it and it would screw over too many GMs to be feasible. What I think they'll do is freeze the cap where it is for a few years and set a new, lower percentage revenue determinant. At that point, the cap will be either $70 million or the new percentage, whichever is higher.

I can see this being the case. The players are not going to roll over this CBA like they did last one. And if one of the proposals is a drop in the cap, the players will definitely never approve it.

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I don't see what the big deal is. If the cap drops, player salaries will drop accordingly, there should be no issues with having to drop players to get under the cap. It is completely different than last time. Last time around, player salaries were cut by 24% (existing contracts) and yes, some teams had to cut players to get under the cap, but that is because they were operating under a pre-cap world and they may have been paying way over the cap in salaries. Going from one cap world to another shouldn't not impact anything, reduction in salaries across the board should take care of any issues.

How would it screw over the GMs? The players agreed to a 24% rollback last time and players salaries are a lot higher now then they were pre-rollback, so a small rollback doesn't seem completely illogical.

It wouldn't screw the GM's because it would pretty much have to include a salary rollback.

A small rollback may seem logical, but I can't see the players agreeing to it very easily. They conceded and agreed to a cap. And now their salaries are tied to revenue (something which they have zero control over). The reason their salaries are up is because revenue is up. So it's a tricky argument to make that they need to pay the players less even though revenues continue to increase.

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They won't roll back the cap or salaries. The players would never ever approve it and it would screw over too many GMs to be feasible. What I think they'll do is freeze the cap where it is for a few years and set a new, lower percentage revenue determinant. At that point, the cap will be either $70 million or the new percentage, whichever is higher.

This. I can't believe that Bettman and Co. would proudly announce the cap going up...again, and then have to turn around in the same season and lower it because of the CBA. That would be supremely unfair to teams like Minnesota (and anyone else near the Cap) that operated under the assumption of the Cap being where it is.

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I don't see what the big deal is. If the cap drops, player salaries will drop accordingly, there should be no issues with having to drop players to get under the cap. It is completely different than last time. Last time around, player salaries were cut by 24% (existing contracts) and yes, some teams had to cut players to get under the cap, but that is because they were operating under a pre-cap world and they may have been paying way over the cap in salaries. Going from one cap world to another shouldn't not impact anything, reduction in salaries across the board should take care of any issues.

How would it screw over the GMs? The players agreed to a 24% rollback last time and players salaries are a lot higher now then they were pre-rollback, so a small rollback doesn't seem completely illogical.

I fundamentally do not understand why we need a salary rollback when the cap itself has almost doubled over 8 seasons. It went from $39.0 million to $70.2 million. Heck, the salary FLOOR is significantly higher now than the Cap was in 2005-06...so how does it make any sense that we need to roll back player salaries?

The problem is that the CBA was shoddily conceived and GM's found several ways to game the system. Since the cap hit is determined as an average of the salaries (not the actual salary for this year), you saw tons of long-term, front-loaded deals. Which means that while the Cap may be $70 million, teams may actually be paying $80 million, $90 million, whatever in salaries.

Also, while the CBA might have envisioned salaries going down across the board, that isn't what happened. Top FA's were pursued as aggressively as ever, even pushing mid-tier guys like Mike Cammalieri into "star" value contracts. Also, the league became significantly younger, as teams compensated for this by filling out their rosters with entry-level contracts (see: Blackhawks, Chicago). I think a lot of the veterans lost money too (or were forced to Europe for more money) because of this approach to the Cap.

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I fundamentally do not understand why we need a salary rollback when the cap itself has almost doubled over 8 seasons. It went from $39.0 million to $70.2 million. Heck, the salary FLOOR is significantly higher now than the Cap was in 2005-06...so how does it make any sense that we need to roll back player salaries?

I think the biggest issue is that the floor has increased so much. My guess from your comments are that you don't understanding why their needs to be a rollback because revenues have obviously increased dramatically, that's why the cap has gone up, what's the problem? Well, revenues have gone up signficantly, but those revenues are being generated by the rich teams. The current system simply caused the rich teams to get richer (i.e. profits have increased because player salaries have gone down). The poorer teams are really struggling now to afford paying our salaries to get to the floor.

I'm not sure what the best solution is though as rolling salaries back and reducing the % that players will get to 50% of league revenues let's say will help a bit, but at league revenues grow (because of the rich teams bringing in all the revenues, the poorer teams are still going to struggle as the floor keeps riding up.

I think it would be tough to not raise the floor as you would then lose competitiveness as some teams would be spending WAY MORE than others (as it used to be). I think the only logical solution is to add in some form of revenue sharing (I think they already have something, but it needs to be more signficant). Some will argue that rich teams shoudln't have to support poor teams, but the counter to that is that the teams are earning money off the league, not simply their own operations, therefore, those league revenues should be shared in some way.

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basically the new CBA will be a lot like the last one, the framework is already there. I could see more revenue sharing to protect the bad teams and thus protect union jobs. In exchange the cap might come down, but I could also see the cap floor dropping and the cap ceiling staying where it is. The union wont like that, no one wants to be on one of the cap floor teams. So maybe the players agree to cut revenues from 57% to 53%? Who knows.

I can also see the cap floor rules enforced for stringently, more money for rookies, maximum years on contracts, deal structuring rules etc.

I predict well lose a month of the season, maybe less.

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I think it would be tough to not raise the floor as you would then lose competitiveness as some teams would be spending WAY MORE than others (as it used to be). I think the only logical solution is to add in some form of revenue sharing (I think they already have something, but it needs to be more signficant). Some will argue that rich teams shoudln't have to support poor teams, but the counter to that is that the teams are earning money off the league, not simply their own operations, therefore, those league revenues should be shared in some way.

Agree. Team needs an opponent to play hockey. So unless "rich" teams want to be the only teams left they need to share.

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